EBay said its marketplaces business, which includes its flagship website, saw the strongest growth rate since 2006.

John Donahoe, the eBay chief executive, said: ""We delivered a great second quarter, driven by eBay Marketplaces' best performance in years, strong growth at PayPal and strong same-store-sales growth for GSI's large retail customers."

The company makes most of its money by charging merchants a fee to list items posted for sale. It also generates revenue from PayPal transaction fees.

It is expanding PayPal beyond the Internet, offering payment services to brick-and-mortar stores and to mobile devices.

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"We now expect eBay and PayPal mobile to each transact $10 billion in volume in 2012 - that's more than double 2011, a staggering surge in mobile shopping and payments on devices that did not exist just a few years ago. Retail is at an inflection point, and we are helping to reshape how people around the world shop and pay."

PayPal ended the quarter with 113.2m active accounts, up 13pc from a year earlier.